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David Hume
David Hume (7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish historian, philosopher, economist, diplomat and essayist known today especially for his radical philosophical empiricism and skepticism. In light of Hume's central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and in the history of Western philosophy, Bryan Magee judged him as a philosopher "widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language." While Hume failed in his attempts to start a university career, he took part in various diplomatic and military missions of the time. He wrote The History of England which became a best-seller, and it became the standard history of England in its day. His empirical approach places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others at the time as a British Empiricist. Tossup Questions # This philosopher discussed billiard balls to unravel the assumption that "constant conjunction" of events implies "necessary connexion" between them. This man wrote that "custom or habit" is the only reason to believe in causation, an example of his skepticism about induction. This empiricist wrote that all ideas come from impressions, except when considering colors one has seen and imagining a "missing shade of blue" between them. For 10 points, name this Scottish author of Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. # This thinker claimed both animals and humans both acquire customs through experimentation in a work that argues we trust some testimony since man has strong memory and is not inclined to lie. This man used the example of a house to disprove the argument from design in a work narrated by Pamphilus. One of this man's works that distinguished between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" woke Kant from his (*) "dogmatic slumber". In that work, this author of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion conceded that one exception to his distinction between "sense impressions" and "ideas" was the "missing shade of blue". For 10 points, name this author of A Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, a Scottish philosopher. # This philosopher claimed that intentional actions are the products of emotions, rather than of reason, in the section "On the Passions." He distinguished between a priori "relations of ideas" and a posteriori "matters of fact", which must be disproved with evidence rather than logic. He argued that our minds combine simple ideas together to understand complex ideas, an idea known as his "copy principle." This author of A Treatise of Human Nature refuted his own argument by demonstrating our ability to imagine a "missing shade of blue." For 10 points, identify this Scottish empiricist author of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. # The eleventh chapter of one of his treatises contains a dialogue between the author and an imaginary Epicurean friend, who attacks Stoicism to illustrate the author's point that rationalism is incompatible with religious experience. In the seventh section of that work, he argued that uniform past experience leads to the impression that necessity creates all (*) causal connections. He argued against testimony and revealed religion as a basis for proofs of God's existence in a section called "Of Miracles." This thinker argued that it is not necessary for the mind to be exposed to a concept for it to imagine it by using the example of a "missing shade of blue." For 10 points, name this author of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, a Scottish empiricist. # This man inserted himself into one of his works as a character who rejects the teleological argument for God's existence because no one has witnessed the universe being designed. In addition to writing that work featuring Philo and Demea, this thinker pointed out an issue in which people suggest what ought to be by using what actually is. This author of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion argued that we have no rational basis for thinking the sun will rise tomorrow in his critique of inductive reasoning. For 10 points, name this Scottish philosopher who wrote An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and A Treatise of Human Nature.